Sunday afternoon. The Flemish Lion resounds in a crowded Ghent Capitole. The N-VA electoral conference is over and the campaign can now really begin. Chairman Bart De Wever waves to his militants with a bouquet of yellow flowers.
N-VA was the last Flemish party to hold its electoral congress on Sunday and set out its party programme. Confederalism or a stricter migration policy are little more than an afterthought in the Capitol. In the run-up to June 9, N-VA is fully opting for the socio-economic. Or, in their words, the money of the hardworking Flemish.
For an hour and a half, the party’s leaders once again remind their supporters that the prosperity of the Flemish is at stake in the upcoming election. Nowhere in the world is the tax burden higher – and yet the country’s accounts are deeply in the red. It is the Flemish who will pay the costs, De Wever warns.
Vivaldi is of course the head of Jut. The seven federal government parties have brought the country to the brink of financial abyss in recent years, it is said. “There are many parties that now promise heaven and, with a view to the elections, suddenly find their true calling. Don’t be fooled,” warns Flemish Finance Minister Matthias Diependaele. A stab at Open Vld and CD&V.
Done
Regardless of its own program, the stakes of the elections for N-VA are clear: a “crushing defeat” for the federal coalition. De Wever: “Done with Vivaldi, done with squeezing and laughing at the hardworking Flemish, done with governing without a Flemish majority.” A promise that is received with thunderous applause in the audience.
The socialists of the PS also have to pay the price – as is tradition. Under Vivaldi, according to De Wever, bags of money went to people who did not work: “It is no coincidence that this is the largest voter group of the Parti Socialiste.” And working Flemish people are in for even more misery: “Our research department counted more than 10 billion in new taxes in their program. When I presented that to Magnette, he laughed: it’s a bit more. And he didn’t even attempt to argue that the North will have to pay 70 to 80 percent of that.”
“They are fools who work,” De Wever quoted Juul Kabas. The N-VA research department recently calculated that people in an entry-level job are barely better off financially than people who are not working. Although Professor Ive Marx, director of the Center for Social Policy at the UA, dismissed N-VA’s calculations as “nonsense. In the vast majority of cases, working yields a lot more than not working.”
Uphill
N-VA is positioning itself in the election market as the only alternative to Vivaldi. A vote for the extreme parties – Vlaams Belang or PVDA – is merely a ‘detour to Vivaldi 2’. Those parties will not participate in federal government after June 9. Only if N-VA is large enough can a new federal majority be formed. And if necessary, De Wever wants to lead it himself as prime minister.
But the N-VA chairman realizes that his party is not immediately brimming with confidence in the polls. N-VA has been losing for some time in the 2019 elections, which were already a major disappointment. N-VA is bleeding on its right flank, where it has been overtaken by Vlaams Belang. He already seems to be the big winner of the elections.
For N-VA it is “cycling uphill”, according to De Wever. His party is no longer the major player in the north of the country. A community revolution therefore seems very difficult in any case.
De Wever’s reasoning has always been that N-VA must obtain more than 30 percent to demand a major step towards confederalism. That goal is very far away. Based on the polls, N-VA would convince just over 20 percent of Flemish people. This makes it a lot bigger than the center parties CD&V, Vooruit and Open Vld.
Mahdi
The competition also sees that N-VA is no longer all-powerful in Flanders. In The newspapaer Sammy Mahdi and Georges-Louis Bouchez, the chairmen of CD&V and MR, indicated that they want to form the axis of a new government together after the elections. “If we make our move with the Christian Democrats and Liberals, N-VA will have to follow,” Bouchez said.
This collaboration is somewhat reminiscent of the entente between Wouter Beke and Charles Michel, who also stated in 2019 that they wanted to form the driving force of the next government. This ultimately led to a centre-right government with N-VA. Even now, Bouchez says: “We want a government that is as center-right as possible.” But De Wever does not believe in that scenario. He mainly sees the start of five additional years of Vivaldi in a CD&V-MR collaboration.
In any case, De Wever has not had a good word to say about MR and its chairman Bouchez for longer than today. On a socio-economic level, both parties are close to each other, but according to De Wever this is only an appearance: MR may present itself as centre-right, but with Vivaldi it is said that it is taking a much too left-wing course.
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